After Confession
by anotherweasley
Summary: Post Homicide: The Movie-Frank and Mary have a talk.


After Confession  
By: Olivia  
  
Frank gazed up toward the heavens as he sat on his front stoop. The November sky was cloudless. The half moon and stars shone brightly upon Charm City. Frank Pembleton felt as he hadn't felt in a long time. He felt lost.  
  
No that wasn't true. He had felt lost for over a year now. Sure, he loved being a civilian. He loved teaching. He loved the connection he got with real living, breathing human beings. He was like Prometheus bringing the knowledge of fire to them. And yet there was always that part of him, that part he kept hidden away from Mary, Olivia, Frank Jr., and, more importantly perhaps, himself. A part of him would always be a cop. Tim had said so. Part of him longed to be out there prowling the streets of Baltimore bringing murderers in and sweet-talking them into confessing their crimes. Sure as a teacher of Catholicism at Loyola College he was spreading the Word of God. But he was preaching to the choir. He wanted to be out there speaking for the dead, meeting out God's justice here on earth.  
  
Tim's confession had blown this desire of Frank's to the ends of the world. For once he didn't want to speak for the dead. He didn't want to speak for this low-life scum Luke Ryland. He didn't want to meet out God's justice upon Tim.  
  
At the sound of the door creaking open, Frank looked back toward the door. A sleepy Mary, her navy blue robe wrapped tightly around her, emerged from their row home. Frank could read the confusion on her faces as she sat down beside him on the cold cement steps. She pulled her robe a little tighter against the brisk autumn air, which seemed to have little effect on her husband.  
  
"What are you doing out here, Frank? It's late."  
  
Frank turned his attention back to the sky, thinking, saying nothing. He didn't know how to tell her all that had happened in this one single day.  
  
But Mary already knew something and she sensed the weight Frank was carrying. "I heard on the news that the shooter has been caught. I also heard Gee passed away. I'm so sorry, Frank."  
  
Frank nodded mechanically.  
  
"Is that where you've been all this time? With your friends?"  
  
Frank chuckled mirthlessly. "My friends? They were never really my friends. I treated them as co-workers, colleagues. I always kept them at a distance. No I was going to come home afterwards, but I had something to do, some things to think about. I went for a walk."  
  
"A walk? In this cold weather? Come on, let's go inside and you can get warm, okay, Frank?" asked Mary.  
  
But Frank didn't move and so neither did Mary. She could tell that something was weighing heavily on Frank's mind. She sensed it was Gee's death. She was partially right.  
  
After a few silent moments, Frank started talking. "It's bad enough that Gee died before I, I mean I found his killer, but he died before I got a chance to talk to him. He woke up and I didn't get to talk to him, to explain why I left Homicide, to let him know that I didn't hate him. Tim told me he didn't hate me, but he might just have been saying that."  
  
Mary started rubbing Frank's back. She tried to comfort and warm him simultaneously. "Tim wouldn't lie to you, Frank. He respects you too much. We haven't seen Tim in a long while. Why don't you invite him over for dinner sometime soon? He's always loved the kids so much..."  
  
Mary's voice trailed off by what she saw in Frank's face as he turned to look at her. It was probably something that would have gone unnoticed by anyone who didn't know Frank, but she saw it. She knew that she had some how unconsciously hit on whatever was really upsetting him.  
  
"Tim won't be coming over anytime soon," said Frank quietly.  
  
Mary stopped rubbing Frank's back. "Did you two have a fight?"  
  
Frank turned and looked at Mary. "Tim's in jail for killing a man."  
  
All Mary could do was stare at Frank unbelieving. "Tim? Tim Bayliss? Your partner? Sensitive Tim Bayliss? I don't believe it."  
  
"I couldn't either. Thought it was a bad joke. This guy Luke Ryland was killing women on the Internet for all to see," explained Frank.  
  
Mary nodded as stray memories came back to her. "Yes I remember it from the news. He got off on a technicality didn't he?" Suddenly Mary saw where all this was going. "Oh, no."  
  
"He confessed to me tonight, Mary, after we caught Gee's killer." The words started to pout out of Frank's mouth as if by speaking he could purge himself from the reality of it all, dissociate himself from it. "He told me he did it to protect future victims. He waited for me to come back so he could confess to me. Who else would I tell he said? He wanted me to turn him in. Can you believe that?"  
  
"You turned him in," said Mary quietly. It wasn't an accusation. She simply knew what her husband would do when faced with a criminal confession. Killing to him was wrong. There was no in between. There was no back and white. Thou shalt not kill.  
  
"I wasn't going to. I wasn't going to."  
  
Mary looked closely at her husband in surprise.  
  
"I wasn't going to. I wasn't going to," Frank repeated. "Tim said he was okay with it in his heart. That he knew he did the right thing, that he saved lives by killing Ryland. But in his mind, he can't reconcile it in his mind. He said he was going to kill himself if I didn't take him in. The son of a bitch waited for me to come back to lay this on me. He took a bullet for me and he expected me to take one for him. Said it was square business."  
  
"Who else would he confess to Frank?" asked Mary.  
  
Frank was chilled at the echo of his partner's words on the lips of his wife.  
  
Mary laid her cold palm on Frank's cheek. His cheek was warm and wet. "Tim loves you, Frank. You were always more than a partner to him."  
  
"If I had been there for him, Mary," Franks voice started to break, "if I had still been his partner, he would have talked to me. I could have stopped him from killing Ryland."  
  
"You can't blame yourself, Frank. Tim knew what he was doing."  
  
Frank shook his head. "No he didn't, Mary. If he had known how killing Ryland would eat away at his soul, if he had known how this would have affected him, he would have thought twice before pulling the trigger. Had I let him know that I was there for him, even if I wasn't his partner... You know I never even thanked him for saving my life that night...."  
  
"You love him, Frank."  
  
Frank looked at Mary with startled eyes.  
  
Mary smiled at Frank. "You've always kept him at a distance, kept him from getting close to you. You know he loves you. Either you don't want to admit it to yourself or your afraid of hurting him because you can't return his affection in the way that he wants. You don't love him as you love me, but you do love him. You care about him. He's your partner and you don't want to see him hurt. Your distance hurts him, but you don't mean to hurt him."  
  
"But I have, Mary. I have hurt him. He wanted my forgiveness tonight, but I couldn't forgive him. I'm not God. How could I forgive him? I don't have the power of absolution."  
  
Mary sighed quietly as she reluctantly took her hand off Frank's face. "Frank, Tim looks up to you. He wanted `your' forgiveness, not God's. He's ashamed of the way you must look at him now. He's afraid he's lost any respect you ever for him. He's afraid he has lost his friend, his partner, for good this time."  
  
Frank nodded. "He tried to tell me today how he loved being my partner. How he missed it. I changed the subject. I couldn't tell him that I missed being his partner too. I missed being out on the streets with him and in the box interrogating witnesses. It was a rush being back out there with him today. Tim almost died a year ago because I couldn't pull that damn trigger. That punk was standing there, his gun pointed directly at me, about to fire and I couldn't kill him. Tim saved my life. I thought he needed a better partner, one who wouldn't put his life in danger like that again. I should have told him that. I should have thanked him. I should have told him a lot of things. I should have let him know that just because I left Homicide that it didn't mean that I wasn't there for him."  
  
"He knows you care, Frank. Deep down Tim, knows you care. He knows you just have trouble expressing how you feel."  
  
"I'm afraid he doesn't know, Mary." Frank let out a deep breath. "They're arraigning him tomorrow. I was going to go, you know. Just in case he needed...they needed someone to vouch for him or something."  
  
Mary smiled. "I'm sure Tim would appreciate a familiar face."  
  
Frank returned her smile. "I love you, Mary."  
  
"I know. I love you too."  
  
Mary leaned in and kissed Frank gently on the lips. "I'm going inside now. Don't stay out here too long."  
  
"Okay."  
  
Mary got up and left Frank alone sitting on the stoop. Frank turned his attention back to the stars and wished in his heart that Tim was okay tonight. There was a long road ahead of Tim, but Tim wasn't going to walk it alone. Whatever Frank could do to smooth the path he would do. Because that's what any friend or partner would do.  
  
The End  
  
"It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent should suffer."-William Blackstone-"Commentaries on the Laws of England"   
  
"How shall I lose the sin, yet keep the sense. And love the offender, yet detest the offence?"-Alexander Pope-"Eloisa to Abelard"  
  
"We pardon to the extent that we love."-Fracois La Rochefoucauld-"Sentences et Maximes Morales" 


End file.
